Tagged: Skills

La Liga have rejected the payment for Neymar as lawyers of the star seek to trigger his release clause of £198 million.

The 25-year old is expected to move to Paris St-Germain in a record shattering move this summer. The player has informed the club of his decision to exit and even his teammates. However, La Liga have refused to sanction the deal, claiming PSG are violating Financial Fair Play rules.

Spanish sources earlier claimed that Barcelona would report the incident to UEFA but nothing so far. In Spain, players need to buy themselves from their contract with clubs which is what Neymar’s reps have done.

Players would deposit the buyout clause with La Liga so he/she could be release from his/her contractual obligations. It is the league that then releases the money to the club involved.

“We can confirm that the lawyers of the player have come to La Liga to deposit the clause and that it has been rejected,” La Liga claimed. Continue reading…

It was the start of an important season and Manchester United were in dire need of making a comeback statement after a recent pause of their title winning spree no thanks to Manchester City and Chelsea.

The once dominant traditional contenders where now at full fledge war with Arab and Russian billions.

Something else troubled The Red Devils though;They were entering a season without legendary goalie Erdwin Van der Sarand there was a lot of uncertainty over the success of whoever was going to take the baton from the then 31-year old. The last time Manchester united faced a goalie crisis; it took years to land one capable of really standing in the big shoes of legend Peter Schmeichel. And that person was yes Van der Sar.

The first few matches of David de Geawere far from fun. The Spaniard was soon under fire for having a very poor foot work. Even as flashes of his brilliance were sometimes aired the uneasiness refused to go. Continue reading…

Earlier in the season, Luis Enrique announced that he will step down as the head coach of Barcelona when the end of the season arrives and this has sparked rumors to spread around in relation to who is going to step up and become next manager of Barcelona, one of the candidates that was being heavily linked with the coaching position in Camp Nou was EusebioSacritan.

Eusebio Sacristan is a former player of Barcelona; he helped the Spanish club in lifting 4 La Liga trophies as well as more pieces of silverware during his time spent as a player back in the 1990’s.

A few years later on and Eusebio went on to become the assistant coach of Barcelona as well as the head coach of the youth academy of Barcelona. Eusebio is currently the head coach of Real Sociedad and even though he has the chance of making a return to Camp Nou, the 52 year old Spanish tactician recently said that he has no intentions of leaving Real Sociedad. Continue reading…

Catalan giants, FC Barcelona rejected the chance to sign Real Madrid midfielder, Luka Modric in 2008 just before he signed for Tottenham Hotspurs.

Former Barca scout and father of the Blaugrana’s protégé ­– Bojan Krkic Sr. – made this revelation while speaking with SER Catalunya.

According to him, Barca could not sign Modric because they felt satisfied with what they had in the middle of their park – Yaya Toure, Sergio Busquests, Andres Iniesta and Xavi – which to them were enough to keep their success engine going. They were wrong. Xavi has since hung up his boots, while Toure left for Manchester City after a strained relationship with then coach Pep Guardiola. Only Iniesta and Busquests are left at the mesunque club.

“We had it our hands. Modric was a player with a winning mentality, but the club weren’t thinking about the future, only the short to medium term.

“Our contact in Croatia spoke highly of Modric before he signed for Tottenham. I was working for Barca then and they sent us various DVDs with Dinamo Zagreb and the Croatian national team.” Continue reading…

Dani Alves will be 34 years old next year, and it will be hard to imagine Barcelona giving their long-serving right-back a new contract.

For this reason, Barcelona will have to start planning for a replacement at the moment itself.

One possibility will be Hector Bellerin. The latter has come through the ranks at Arsenal and has established himself as a first-team player. Given that he is a former Barcelona academy player, he may appear to be the obvious player to fill the void that will be left by Alves. However, you should expect Arsenal not to give up on their player easily especially now that they are not a selling club anymore. Bellerin is an established player for the Arsenal defence, and it will be hard to find them allowing him to leave their team.

Another possibility for Barcelona will be CesarAzpilicueta. The Chelsea player is currently frustrated playing on the left side of the defence, and it is likely that a good offer coming from Barcelona may tempt the defender to make the move to Spain. However, it is very unlikely that Chelsea will let the player go, and we will have to wait for the arrival of Conte to find out how he is going to structure his team. Continue reading…